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comment by thesummerking
thesummerking  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism

White people don't need another buzzword for their psychosis. Seriously.





TheVenerableCain  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Do you enjoy being openly racist?

mrsamsa  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fair point but I don't think the label is for them really, it's more for others understanding why white people (or privileged people in general) react so defensively and with so much hostility when the slightest race-based issue comes up.

I think it's easy sometimes to dismiss people who misunderstand social issues as just being racists or bigots and have done with it, but it can be important to try to figure out what biases and processes are driving certain reactions. For some people it obviously can just be plain racism. But for others they usually have good intentions, accept the same basic goal (i.e. equality) but get stuck on the details because it's such a radically different way of looking at life than the way they've been taught.

thesummerking  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We know why they act defensively, why they "misunderstand". We've known for decades, if not hundreds of years, if not millennium: It is because they do not want to face the darkness they have accepted, that they have become. This goes for white people or privileged folks. At some point the excuse stops being ignorance and it is wilful. If it is wilful ignorance or apathy in the face of it, then that is a type of psychosis. Especially with so much information about this.

I'm over with the excuses for these people.

mrsamsa  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Again, I can't really disagree, I just wish there was a way to fix it.

thesummerking  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There is a way to fix it. For them to admit they have a problem, en masse, and then take responsibility for it, en masse.

tla  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Tautology isn't known to be a very efficient method of getting fixes to magically happen unfortunately.

wrangler  ·  3420 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I guess you could say that is a fix for the problem, but I don't really think you caught on to what has been said.

The solution you proposed will never work if no one wants to admit they are wrong.

mrsamsa  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sounds accurate - the problem seems to be getting them to admit it.

thesummerking  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Which is why the other obvious part of that solution is to do whatever the hell we need to do in spite of their ignorance and the systems we all built around it. We have all -- one way or another -- been coerced or brainwashed into a system that anyone will admit is completely fucked up. No reason to be in feelings about something so straight forward.

user-inactivated  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Lonely dissent is a scary business. Someone always has to start first, and people most often don't like to be - or feel - different. Can't be a celebrity, either: people start to think funny when it comes to someone on the pedestal - as if their personal ideal has been broken and not worthy of regarding any longer. I believe this happened to Lance Armstrong after he admitted taking... some sort of drugs that enhanced his performance.

thesummerking  ·  3419 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Humanity has to evolve. Besides: most people are doing whatever they want, except they're being stupid about it.

user-inactivated  ·  3419 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Evolution, as we have already learned, is a very slow process. More than that, "has to" doesn't equate to "will". It's not to say that humanity has grim future - it's to say that it won't happen unless required actions are taken, and maybe, for us, those actions are spreading knowledge to reveal and abolish ignorance, even if a step at a time. "Us", in this case, being not a sort of the elite knowledgeable, but any person who knows something others don't.

    most people are doing whatever they want

From what I've learned so far, this is simply not true. Doing whatever you want is a privilege for a human being, not a common way. We're all controlled by fears and instincts most of the time, and even the most knowledgeable and resilient of us can last for so long at a time before needing to rest. Most often, we abide by the unrecognized laws of our subconscious which dictates how we react to this or that without us having to spend time and effort figuring the situation out consciously. It is why many people spend years of their lives in an office instead of pursuing their passions, whatever those are: we're all afraid of being misunderstood ("You have a wonderful job which pays for incredible luxury - what's not to like?!"), of being alienated from the tribe we're in ("If that loony is going to quit his job, we're done: that would be a step too crazy") or of being unloved or hated.

For all our progress in science and philosophy, we're still mostly animals. It doesn't make us better or worse, but recognizing this fact whenever we work with other humans - and ourselves as we introspect - makes those who do wiser to the circumstances.